Some one says that it is ‘not pain undergone but pain accepted’ that bears fruit an hundredfold. You know the acceptance has not been easy,—you know sometimes the flints have cut my feet deep enough, but thank God for two things—I never for any single moment lost the absolute certainty of Infinite Love and Wisdom ‘brooding over the face of the waters,’—the certainty of my Father’s arms around me,—and secondly that no suffering or pain could shake the love that has never been half so strong, so real, so ideal, so unselfish as now. I doubt if I ever half knew what being a friend was before,—I think I have earned the knowledge now—some of it. And, Mother, about my work. I cannot tell you the strong exulting feeling that seems to set God’s seal to my work, in that through all the personal agony I have held firm to _that_: at no moment, I believe, would I have purchased what I longed for most on earth at the price of that,—that I have felt through all ‘The light may be taken out of my life (and thank God how far that is from being so!) but the object never can!’ Don’t you know how the lines that reminded us of the oath upon our head, that bade us ‘never again our loins untie, or let our torches waste or die’ was the strong helpful thing through it all. And though I did believe in myself—and _thou_ ever didst believe in me, Mother!—yet so long as my work ‘walked in silken shoon’ and lay side by side with the pleasantest life possible for me, there was a certain thought about fair weather sailing,—a certain (not doubt, but) diffidence in looking on to the time of breakers,—a feeling as of David, ‘I have not _proved_ them.’ But now I feel that I have come to the proof,—that my armour has not failed in the battle,—something the sure happy confidence (farthest of all from presumption) ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ You can’t think how it ‘heartened’ me (you know that nice old word?) to find that truly as well as verbally my work does hold the first place.... I am beginning to have hope, Mother! If I only suffer enough—and I don’t believe mine will ever be a smooth or easy life—I may yet be fit to _be_ the head for which I am looking so earnestly.... But all seems centred in the one thought, ‘Lead Thou me on!’—or rather, not ‘me’ but ‘us,’—all the wanderers. Yours very lovingly, SOPH.” Not that S. J.-B. was ever conventional even in her religion. Here is a characteristic extract from the diary of the same period: